How Agile CMOs Maintain Growth Amid Economic Uncertainty

The Gist

• Rethink team structure. CMOs should assess skills and workflows to match shifting business goals like retention and margin protection.

• Cut low-yield spend. Event sponsorships and legacy campaigns should be replaced with initiatives that drive measurable pipeline results.

• Show long-term value. Use scenario planning and cost-per-opportunity metrics to show how marketing spend impacts future revenue.

Markets have faced extraordinary volatility recently. In early April alone, market capitalization plummeted $5 trillion over just two days following tariff hikes by President Trump. These were the highest tariffs introduced in more than a century. These measures intensified already-high inflation, escalated recession fears and put immense pressure on businesses across the board.

Marketing budgets, often viewed skeptically as discretionary expenses, now face unprecedented scrutiny from CFOs and C-suite executives. CMOs face urgent demands to justify spend, demonstrate immediate ROI and make tough budgetary decisions.

But amid this intense pressure, smart CMOs recognize economic disruption as a strategic opportunity to showcase marketing agility and their indispensable role in driving business resilience and growth.

Here’s how marketing leaders can use strategic agility to maintain momentum and prove value amid economic uncertainty.

Table of Contents

Review Structure and Spending

In a climate where capital and labor costs continue to rise, your operational strategy must prioritize efficiency, flexibility and resilience. Begin with a thorough assessment of your current operating model.

Evaluate Team Structures and Skills

Make sure your team’s skills align with shifting company priorities such as margin protection, customer retention and efficiency. Address immediate business needs, and identify gaps that might impede your ability to quickly adapt. 

Analyze Budget Flexibility

Examine your budget line by line to determine potential areas of flexibility. What expenditures can be delayed, renegotiated or reallocated? Leave no stone unturned. Expenses like personnel, event sponsorships and tech contracts often may seem fixed, but they often contain hidden opportunities for cost optimization.

For example, many companies treat events as a status symbol, not a revenue driver. They end up sponsoring a booth or paying for a speaking slot only to walk away with zero tangible results. But you can look more closely at what flexibility you have here. Can you negotiate contracts? Can you co-sponsor with a marketing partner to cut down costs? Can you permanently shutter events that don’t deliver and reinvest in higher-intent digital or targeted ABM strategies that actually convert?

Identify Areas for Change

Find the places where variable-cost options like outsourcing or specialized external talent can quickly fill skill or capacity gaps without permanently increasing headcount. You likely have a backlog of outdated vendor relationships, freelancers or agencies providing minimum value. Now is the time to streamline these into flexible, performance-based partnerships.

Adopting these flexible operational tactics helps you rapidly adjust your approach to changing business demands without sacrificing critical capabilities.

Related Article: The Year You’ll Have to Defend Every Marketing Dollar

Prioritize High-Impact Initiatives

Current research reveals that 94% of advertisers worry about tariffs significantly affecting their ad spending. Twenty-two percent of advertisers anticipate spending cuts between 11-20%, while 60% expect budget reductions ranging from 6-10%.

In this environment, it’s essential to swiftly shift resources away from low-return activities toward initiatives that deliver clear, measurable outcomes. Large-scale events with unclear pipeline impacts, generic branding campaigns with indirect value and underperforming digital channels represent areas ripe for reallocation.

Instead, focus investments on high-impact initiatives like ABM, targeted digital campaigns and pipeline acceleration programs. For example, reallocating funds from generalized advertising to highly targeted ABM efforts often yields stronger, quantifiable pipeline results and a lower cost per qualified lead. For low-ROI activities that persist primarily due to legacy expectations rather than genuine pipeline or revenue impact (such as high-cost status events), either boldly challenge these assumptions during downturns or creatively negotiate co-branded or collaborative alternatives to substantially reduce costs.

This strategic reprioritization optimizes limited resources and clearly demonstrates marketing’s essential role in driving measurable growth.

Related Article: How Tariff Messaging Can Make or Break Brand Loyalty

Model the Long-Term Impact

In periods of volatility, marketers must decisively communicate their department’s contributions beyond short-term impacts. Scenario planning combined with micro-economic data provides a powerful toolkit for articulating marketing’s long-term value.

Use scenario planning to model multiple situations (i.e., 10%, 30% or even 50% pipeline declines) and clearly illustrate how different budget decisions today impact future quarters. Provide CFOs and stakeholders with analyses that vividly show the long-term pipeline health implications of budget cuts versus strategic reallocations. Demand modeling helps clearly illustrate the cost per opportunity across sources and categories. For example, digital advertising generally offers lower cost per qualified opportunity, unless it’s a guaranteed opportunity, such as the highly personalized, high-value experiences from The Millennium Alliance. 

Micro-economic data tracking can also be used. Use unit economics, pipeline contribution metrics and account-level engagement data to clearly show how marketing investments correlate directly to sustained revenue growth and customer retention.